The Situationist International: Three Essays on Revolution

Before the Situationists were the Situationists, they were a splinter group that broke with the Lettrists over a disagreement about the cultural relevance of Charlie Chaplin. Purists and iconoclasts from the start, they had no qualms about calling the politically conscious auteur, under persecution in America for his communist sympathies, a “budding fascist” who ought to leave Paris and “go home.”

The Situationist International, founded in 1957 as an avant-garde movement influenced by Dada and Surrealism, carried this irreverence into the spheres of geography and conceptual art. Members took dérives — experimental drifts — through public space, observing the impact of urban planning on the psyche, and engaged in détournement, a repurposing of prosaic cultural objects as revolutionary messages. Pulling stunts like following a map of London through Paris, the Situationists aimed at creating “situations” that subvert the routinized life of modern society to open up moments of directly lived experience.

Overtime, The Situationist International took on a more overtly theoretical focus, culminating in co-founder Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967). But the failure of May 68, which the Situationists were heavily invested in politically and emotionally, led to the SI’s decay and eventual dissolution in 1972. The dogged and dogmatic group left behind a distinctive collection of essays that we will draw from in our discussion this Sunday.

Toward a Situationist International (1957): http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/report.htm#Toward%20a%20Situationist%20International

Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life (1961):
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/6.everyday.htm

The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy (1966): http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.Watts.htm

This event will be hosted at Woodbine, an experimental community space in Ridgewood, Queens.